Matilda Bone (2 page)

Matilda gathered up the wood and charcoal and carried it into the front room, where she dumped it in a heap on the gray coals in the brazier. Ash flew up into her eyes, her hair, her mouth.

"I am smothered near to death," she said. "And my kirtle is stained with sap and ash. I cannot do this."

"I was told you are uncommonly clever," came Peg's voice. "Surely you can make a simple fire."

Matilda took a wooden spoon in her frozen fingers and began to stir the mess in the brazier, gently blowing as she had seen Donal do at the manor. Ashes flew into the air like dusky snowflakes but,
Deo gratias,
the fire lighted. Also the wooden spoon. She opened the door and threw it out into the rain, where it spluttered and lay black and jagged in the mud. Closing the door, she called, "The fire is lit."

She sat down on the bench, crossed her hands on the table, and waited. She had forgone supper last night and was mightily hungry. Her guts grumbled. Finally she asked Peg, "When will there be breakfast?"

A loud sigh came from under the blue coverlet. "When you prepare something."

No doubt,
Matilda thought,
I will also be expected to empty the chamber pots and pick the weevils from the bread.
She sat still, clenching her jaw to hold her misery in, missing Father Leufredus, warm ale and cheese for breakfast, all that was familiar to her.

Peg got up, dressed, and dropped a loaf of yesterday's hard bread on the table in front of Matilda. "Eat. You can start tomorrow." She sat down across from the girl and broke off a bit of bread. "I know something of your story from my cousin, who is brother-in-law to Lord Randall's clerk—how you lost your parents long ago and were raised at the manor," she said, chewing. "Tell me what you did there and what you know."

"What I did not have to do," said Matilda, taking a big breath and a small piece of bread, "was light fires. Or eat sausages."

"Never? What then did you do?"

The girl took a bite of the hard bread and chewed industriously. "I had reading and writing, Latin and Greek, from my father. And Father Leufredus taught me to seek higher things, like God and Heaven, saint-liness and obedience. We prayed, and he taught me about God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell. I read aloud from the lives of the saints when he was tired, did some writing and figuring for him, kept his papers in order and his holy books. I was of much assistance to him."

"Yet this Father Leufredus left you."

"God and the Church called him to London to swear his support to the young king who is Edward the Third. And Lord Randall's clerk's brother-in-law contrived to send me to you. I do not know why I could not accompany Father Leufredus or await his return at the manor. But I could not." Matilda stopped, suddenly overwhelmed by loneliness.

Peg jumped into the silence. "Well, and now you are here, where you will be of much assistance to me," she said. "Let me see your hands."

Matilda held out her small hands, their broad palms and straight fingers stained with ink. "Bonesetting is a skill of the hands," Peg said, examining them front and back. "You seem fine as fivepence to me—smart and strong enough to be a right skillful workfellow to a bonesetter, for all you're little as a flea. In exchange for your doing what I need done, I will give you an occasional penny and your keep."

"As I have said," Matilda responded, still frowning at being likened to a flea, "I assisted Father Leufredus with reading and writing and figuring. Perhaps I could do the same here."

"I have little enough use for figuring and none for writing. As to reading, why only last year Geoffrey Blackhead, the bishop's clerk, was reading from the letters of John of Salisbury as he walked along the river-bank and right into the water. Nothing was ever seen of him again but for his hat, which floated downriver as far as Toadapple Village." Peg crossed herself. "No, there will be no reading here. What I need is someone to tend the fire, see to meals, brew lotions and boil tonics, soothe and restrain patients, and help me in the setting of bones."

Brew and boil? Restrain? Matilda felt hopelessness descend like a weight on her shoulders. She was here in the wrong place with the wrong mistress until Father Leufredus came to rescue her.

"There'll be no one in town can teach you as much about bonesetting as old Red Peg here," Peg went on. "I have been setting bones on the alley since I was apprentice to Harold Spinecracker, many years ago." Peg crossed herself again. "Harold is now setting bones in Heaven, the Lord bless him for a sweet and noble soul."

She swept most of the bread crumbs onto the floor. "What we call bonesetting," she said, "is the freeing of stiff or injured limbs, the mending of broken or ill-formed ones. Folk come with pains or aches, fever sometimes, red and swollen joints sometimes, or leg or arm frozen from disuse. We'll see children ovenidden by ale carts and left with broken limbs, clumsy carpenters who tripped or fell or hammered their fingers instead of nails, men and women crippled by disease. If it has to do with bones or joints, Red Peg is the person to see. Twenty years or more it has now been, and I have tended to every finger, back, and knee in this town."

Matilda frowned. Surely God had sent such suffering and should be the one to see to its release, not this woman. And certainly not Matilda, who yearned for higher things.

"What we do," Peg continued, "depends on what we think wrong. Bonesetting is also a skill of the brain." She smiled at Matilda. "Come here and I will show you." Peg reached for the girl.

Matilda backed away and crossed herself.

"By the broken bones of Saint Stephen!" Peg shouted. "Just what has you trembling and quaking now? Are you still afeared of the Devil grabbing you?"

"No, I am afeared of
you
grabbing me. Will this hurt?"

"Not a jot. Just hasten on up here," said Peg with a soft whack on the girl's rump, "and lie on your back."

Matilda very slowly climbed up onto the table, brushing away the remaining bread crumbs, sausage leavings, and other dusty, lumpy substances. Peg pulled clamps from the ceiling, measured Matilda's height with a critical eye, and chose a section of rope. She attached the clamps to the girl's leg with ropes and pulleys.

Matilda recoiled, inhaling with a hiss. Peg's hands felt warm and strong, but she was not used to being touched.

"If there is aught you do not understand, just ask me. Anytime," said Peg. "Now we begin.

"Fractures are breaks in the bones. We pull the edges apart, straighten the bones, and push the pieces back into place. Then we must hold them together until they mend." Using the girl's skinny leg for a model, Peg showed her how to pack the limb with comfrey root and wrap it in wet leather that would shrink as it dried to act as a splint. "Here," Peg said, "watch how I thread the ropes through this pulley to break down a stiffened joint." And she demonstrated how to restrain struggling patients and how to sit atop those having ill-mended breaks rebroken to keep them from shifting or running away. Peg bounced once, and the girl said, "Oof" and then "Oof!" She was smarting and sore when Peg released her from the table.

"You will also be brewing our lotions, potions, tonics, and ointments. The dried herbs are kept in these crocks by the table. See, here is comfrey, also called boneset. Here, houseleeks and nightshade berries, watercress and wormwood. And sicklewort for stanching cuts. You'll soon learn which is which. Always be careful to use only what I tell you. Do as I do." She added herbs to a kettle and hung it over the fire. "This is horseradish to boil with grease for a liniment. Stir it carefully and watch it closely. And never let the mixture boil over."

She treats me like a kitchen maid,
thought Matilda. As
if I am fit for nothing but measuring and brewing. Why, I know Latin and French and some Greek, as well as
reading and writing and figuring. I can name the three wise men, the seven deadly sins, and a great many of the 133,306,668 devils of Hell: Abaddon, Abduscius, Abigor...

The mixture boiled over onto the dirt floor.

"You beef-brained ninny!" shouted Peg. "You could have roasted yourself! And now it has gone to waste. Here. Pour what is left into this jug."

Matilda tipped the kettle and spilled the remaining liquid.

"It seems I have made a bad bargain," Peg said, grabbing the kettle. "You are not good for much."

Matilda's stomach knotted with fear. She would not want Father Leufredus to come back and find her in disfavor. Or what if this hard woman turned her out? She had nowhere to go until he returned. With tears in her eyes she said softly, "Please, Mistress Peg, show me again. I will attend carefully."

Peg, her face red with anger and teeth clenched, said, "Perhaps we should start with something easier. Now, watch closely." She stuck her own sturdy leg up on the bench and rolled the stocking down to her ankle. "For those who are overworked or suffer the pains of old age or need a gentle touch, I rub a bit of monkshood oil into the joints, like this, and wrap them to keep them warm. Beware, however, my girl. Like meekness, holiness, and clumsiness, monkshood oil can be overdone."

Matilda looked up quickly. Was Peg mocking her? Or jesting? Or was she telling her something important?

Peg stood up and continued. "We do not brew the monkshood oil here. My Tom brings it when he comes." Her face softened. "Tom, now, he travels, comes and goes like the rheumatics. Ten years we have been wed, and still I miss him when he is gone. He betakes himself here and there sharing his knowledge and instructing others. My Tom is a man of learning, wise, clever, and well-mannered."

"A man of learning?" Matilda repeated, suddenly attentive.

"Oh, yes. A great man."

"It is well that he is a great man," Matilda said, "but Father Leufredus advises against earthly attachments, for they take our minds away from God and Heaven."

"Well, everyone prefers a different sort of cheese, I suppose," said Peg.

What a thing to say! Matilda looked at the woman in surprise and horror. If Father Leufredus could hear her! The priest would be appalled at this blasphemy. But he would not wish Matilda to argue with her mistress, so Matilda said only, "Where might I be alone to pray?"

"Right now?"

"Father Leufredus instructed me to pray seven times each day, standing, kneeling, or prostrate on the floor, with arms—"

"I go to Bertrand Buttercrambe's to tend his leg, for he cannot be moved," said Peg. "Scrub down the table and you may have this room until dinner. You have learned enough this morning." And she left the shop muttering, "Would I could adjust a person's thinking with ropes and pulleys as easily as I can a fractured leg."

Matilda, lying on the floor with arms outstretched, frowned at the hearing, thinking Peg hurtful, heretical, and much too heavy for sitting on folk.

"After that unsatisfactory breakfast I am more than ready for dinner," said Peg when she returned.

"And I," added Matilda.

Peg said nothing but pulled a small brass knife from beneath her belt and began to clean the dirt and goose grease from under her fingernails. Finally Matilda sighed and, fearing the answer, asked Peg softly, "What are we eating and when are we eating it?"

"We are eating what you buy in the market, and we are eating it when you bring it home and cook it."

"I cannot."

"Maybe in Heaven," said Peg, "food buys and cooks itself, but on earth someone must do it. And here in my shop that someone is you."

"But I do not know how to buy food or cook it."

"Why not?"

"At the manor others did that. I am no kitchen maid. I seek higher things."

"You had better seek fish heads or chicken pies, else there will be no dinner. Get what is fresh and cheap. And bread. And maybe a cabbage or a ginger cake."

Peg gave Matilda three pennies and directions to the market. Matilda said, "Yes, Mistress Peg," but did not listen as she pulled on her boots and cloak. She had no idea where the market was, but if someone as lowly and uneducated as Mistress Peg could find it, so too could Matilda.

A gusty wind rattled shutters and set shop signs swinging as Matilda walked up the alley and turned onto Frog Road. She looked carefully about her, for she had arrived in near darkness and had not seen this town, this Chipping Bagthorpe, halfway between London and Oxford but near to neither. It was the first time she had been over a mile from the place where she was born.
I never knew,
she thought,
there were so many people in the world, so many roads.
And so many buildings: houses and shops crowded together, leaning higgledy-piggledy against each other and away, to the left and to the right; taverns and inns, dark and crowded and ominous; churches with their bell towers pointing up to Heaven.

What if I lost my way in this place?
she thought, dazed by it all.
I could starve to death around the corner from a baker, die unshriven down the road from a church, and never know.

Taking a deep breath, she turned right past the Church of Saint Zoe the Martyr, who had been hanged from a tree by her hair before being roasted like a snipe, Matilda knew. The streets grew more crowded. Peddlers called out, advertising their meager winter wares: onions and turnips, apples only slightly withered, salt meat, salt fish, salt! Church bells clamored from every street corner. Beggars whined, dogs barked, pigs snorted as they rooted in the refuse. "Have you any rats to kill?" cried one tradesman. "Or clothes to mend?" called another as Matilda walked by.

She went left two streets, up past the well, and around the corner, trying to avoid the occasional housewife emptying her chamber pot out the window, then past the Church of Saint Zoe the Martyr, and then...

Matilda stopped and looked around. Saint Zoe? Again? What now? Straight ahead? Left or right? Matilda prayed for a sign, like the moon on fire or a two-headed horse. But, it being day, there was no moon, and all the horses she saw had but one head.

She turned and went past the Church of Saint Zoe the Martyr once more, three streets the other way, through the Street of the Cupmakers and past the Church of Saint Zoe the Martyr. "
Saliva mucusque!
" said Matilda as she turned again and went four blocks left, past Shoemakers' Street, up along the river to Fish Street, and finally there was the market square.